Post-independence architecture of India has been often perceived as an ongoing struggle between its two opposing ideologies, predominantly those of Gandhi and prime-minister Nehru, translating into rural and industrial, subaltern and dominant or more commonly traditional and modern. This paper attempts to draw out its reconciliation through an historical appreciation of a grass-roots initiative of dairy farmers from Western India and its architectural manifestation in large scale industrial dairy buildings. Here I focus on the Dudhsagar Dairy Plant (1970-73) at Mehsana in Gujarat designed by the prominent Indian architect Achyut Kanvinde (1916-2002). The significance of this factory does not lie solely in its unique rhythmic form of soaring ventilation shafts nor does it merely showcase the growing industrial face of independent India. Rather it provides an opportunity to understand postcolonial modernity against a unique layer of co-operative rural enterprise which led to the historic “White Revolution,” a phenomenal development in India’s dairy industry. It is a story of architecture shaped by social needs and aspirations which used the language of modernism to convey a larger purpose. Achyut Kanvinde played an important role in disseminating and reconfiguring modern architecture in post-colonial India.

The historical and cultural analysis of this dairy plant with its non-elitist background articulates a counter-position to the dominant architectural discourses on India, structured around the dualist framework of “modern/Indian” and the question of identity. In doing so, it addresses the larger debate of critical architecture—the relationship between culture and form. Thus this paper serves also to undermine the postmodern polemics of Indian architectural historiography, by making way for a parallel stance characterised by an alternate but inherent “Indian” expression